Samsung, Xiaomi, 3 others colluding with Amazon, Flipkart: Report – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Samsung, Xiaomi and other smartphone companies colluded with Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart to exclusively launch products on the e-commerce firms’ Indian websites in breach of antitrust laws, according to regulatory reports.
Antitrust investigations conducted by Competition Commission of India found Amazon and Flipkart violated local competition laws by giving preference to select sellers, prioritising certain listings, and steeply discounting products, hurting other firms.
CCI’s 1,027-page report on Amazon said that Indian units of five companies – Samsung, Xiaomi, Motorola, Realme and OnePlus – were “involved in the practice of exclusive” phone launches in “collusion” with Amazon and its affiliates, breaking competition law.
In Flipkart’s case, a 1,696-page CCI report stated Indian units of Samsung, Xiaomi, Motorola, Vivo and Lenovo conducted similar practices.
“Exclusivity in business is anathema. Not only is it against free and fair competition but also against the interest of consumers,” CCI’s additional director general GV Siva Prasad wrote in the Amazon and Flipkart reports, in identical findings.
Xiaomi declined to comment, while the other smartphone makers didn’t respond to requests for comment. Amazon and Flipkart have not commented on reports’ findings .
Both reports said that during probe, Amazon & Flipkart “deliberately downplayed” allegations of exclusive launches, but officials found the practice was “rampant”.
South Korea’s Samsung and China’s Xiaomi are two of India’s biggest smartphone players, together holding an almost 36% market share. India’s e-retail market is set to exceed USD 160 billion by 2028, up from USD 57-60 billion in 2023, consultancy firm Bain estimates.
Amazon and Flipkart have long faced the ire of small retailers in India for hurting their offline businesses. CCI reports said both companies used their foreign investments to provide subsidised rates for services like warehousing and marketing to a select number of sellers.
Probe into Amazon, Flipkart and their sellers was triggered in 2020 by a complaint from an affiliate of Confederation of All India Traders, which has 8 crore members.
CCI will in coming weeks review any objections to its findings from Amazon, Flipkart, the retailer association, and the smartphone companies, and could potentially impose fines along with mandating companies to change their business practices, people familiar with the matter said.
Indian retailers have repeatedly accused Amazon and Flipkart, and smartphone companies, of exclusive phone launches online, saying shopkeepers suffered as they didn’t get the latest models and customers looked for them on shopping websites.